The Stonington Intelligencer
15 February 2000
Cassoulet à la stoningtonienne
The first cassoulet is said to have been made by Frenchmen during the 100 Year War (between 1337 and 1453) with the English. Facing a siege by the enemy, the inhabitants of the town of Castelnaudary put together a gigantic stew made of all their reserves of beans, along with various meats, including goose, pork and pork sausage. This first cassoulet was apparently such a hit with the townspeople that it gave them sufficient energy to repulse the English army. Is it any wonder that cassoulet quickly became the preferred dish of the entire region?
Basically, as you can tell, it's a big stew with beans and while there are a number of recipes in various cook books (please see Julia Childs' recipe for cassoulet in Mastering The Art Of French Cooking if you want a real culinary challenge!), we decided to follow a tried-and-true recipe we'd already enjoyed from the kitchen of longtime Borough resident Eleanor Perényi, who has also spent years in Paris and travelling throughout France with such gourmets as fellow writer Mary McCarthy. Needless to say, she is quite a pro with good, old-fashioned French cooking. At the same time, Mrs Perényi is definitely not a proponent of slavish imitations of French cuisine, as she recognizes that the ingredients available normally here in Stonington are certainly different from those you might pick up in a market outside Toulouse.
In the version of cassoulet that Mrs Perényi likes to make in the Borough for herself and her guests, she uses lamb, pork and pork loin, plus white beans, and in the place of saucisson à l'ail, she likes to use Portuguese-style sausage called choriço, which is readily available in markets around Stonington. In fact, the only part of the cassoulet that wasn't bought in Stonington or Westerly markets were the beans, which I, as sous-chef and reporter, insisted on making specially difficult — Mrs Perényi thought it might be nice to use white cannellini beans, which have a good, sturdy texture when cooked, so I set out to obtain some in the souks of New York City. My first stop was at Balducci's, on lower Sixth Avenue, which of course is a world-famous emporium for fine food. Unfortunately, they didn't have any dried cannellini beans, so I continued my search at glossy Dean & Deluca's on Broadway, where indeed I at last located an elegantly stacked metal shelf-unit full of exotic beans, including the cannellini I was looking for. Success, even at a hefty price. So I bought the approximately 2 lbs of beans we felt we might use.
Tasteful packets of tasteful (and pricey) beans on the shelves of Dean & Deluca, NYC
Suffice it to say that, at a nice but not especially grand foodshop in which I was later buying a sandwich, I stumbled across a big plastic containerful of cannellini beans at a far lower price than what I'd paid a bit earlier. (But it gets worse. Read on.) Taking my life in my hands, I drove speedily to Stonington along I-95 and dropped off the beans at Mrs Perényi's kitchen in time for them to be soaked overnight.
Mrs Perényi and the butcher at McQuade's
The following day the beans had been soaked in water and then put on the stove to simmer ("mijoter" in French, which is a soft rolling boil) for about an hour, without salt. When the beans had simmered long enough, we set out for Westerly, to the McQuade's Market, where we went to the butcher's counter. Mrs Perényi feels very strongly that most "high-quality" cuts of meat that you find in American markets don't have enough fat in them to work well in stews. She insists that stew meats are always the lesser cuts, the shoulder, or the blade end (which, with pork, can look like a little boneless roast). She spoke with the butcher, who got us shoulder of lamb and pork. We found the choriço ourselves. You should have about 1/2 pound of meat per person. (Oh, and I was wandering down the aisle with the beans and my eyes caught sight — they would, you know! — of bagfuls of cannellini beans from Goya. So much for the exotic pursuit of fine foods in New York City.)
The meat counter at McQuade's, Westerly
We also got some lean salt pork, which Mrs Perényi first boiled in a small deep pan, cut it into slices (lardons) and then rendered them. While that was going on, she trimmed the meats and got them ready for browning.
Meat in the kitchen waiting to be browned
When the salt pork was done, she poured the grease from it into a frying pan and began to brown, with high heat, the pieces of pork and lamb. She also added salt and pepper — a good deal of salt, in fact. After that came four sprigs of fresh rosemary from a plant in the house.
A rosemary bush in a southfacing window
She had me pick four leaves from the bay tree thriving in the kitchen, and some fresh parsley from the refrigerator, which we tied into a sort of bouquet garni and added to the pot. If you use fresh herbs, you need to use larger amounts than if you use dried ones, which are more potent. I also chopped a medium-sized onion while Mrs Perényi poured off the grease from the roasted meat. She added the onion to brown lightly.
The bay tree in the kitchen
When that was done, she found a large earthenware casserole and began to assemble the cassoulet, with the beans (half-cooked) and then the pieces of meat, deboned, placed neatly and compactly, along with the slices of choriço. When that was loosely finished, we opened a large tin of Italian tomatoes with basil leaf and Mrs Perényi added the tomatoes to the casserole. She added a bit of water, just to cover, and then put it all in the oven at about 325 degrees to cook for an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes.
At the same time, in another part of the Borough, another friend was busy preparing our dessert — she'd offered to make a mousse au chocolat from scratch! Sacré bleu! So we stopped by to see how that was going and found Ms Wood in her alarmingly tidy kitchen with a potful of chocolate goo on the stovetop. She was, she said, melting the block of chocolate for the mousse.
Sally Wood in her Borough kitchen
Well, who was prepared to argue with that?! Not us.
Melting the chocolate for the mousse
Rich is hardly the word for the ingredients in this delicious dessert. So it meant 40-50 more hours on the stairmaster at the Mystic Community Center. Who cares!
The finished cassoulet
The cassoulet came out of the oven at Mrs Perényi's and then took a trip to my house down towards the Point, where it was covered with the breadcrumbs, parsley and butter for the final cooking in my oven, at 350, for three quarters of an hour or so (longer doesn't hurt this dish too much, which is nice.) Mrs Perényi makes her own breadcrumbs in a Cuisinart, to which she added parsley, and then spreads the mixture over the top of the cassoulet for the last period of cooking.
Hamm's Wine Cellar's in Pawcatuck
Valentina & Scott Barker, proprietors
Of course no dinner is complete without wine and a good cassoulet being eaten on a cold winter's night is perfect for a full-bodied Burgundy wine, which is exactly what the nice folks pictured above at Hamm's (Route 2, 7 Liberty Street, Pawcatuck CT 06379; tel: 860-599-5959 email: hwc@riconnect.com ) provided for us. (Oh, and they happily deliver to the Borough, too!)
Enjoying the cassoulet
At last it was time to eat, and above is a picture of our table and a few of our dinner partners for the cassoulet, which was as delicious as we hoped it would be.
Washing up
Needless to say, we used virtually every plate and utensil in the house and so there was a good deal of inevitable washing-up which followed the meal — about twelve hours after the meal. (We dropped off all the wine bottles in other people's recycling bins, which, as a few of you know, is common Borough practice.)
